THE  DUTY  OF 
THE  CHRISTIAN 
BUSINESS  HAN 


,o 


Phillips  Brooks 


1 


OF  CALIF.  ITBBABY,  LOS  ANGELES 


THE   DUTY 

OF   A 

CHRISTIAN    BUSINESS    MAN 


(15)  <3l 

THE  DUTY  OF  THE 

CHRISTIAN 
BUSINESS    MAN 

By 
PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

\s 


NEW  YORK 

DODGE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
148-156  WEST  23rd  STREET 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
BUSINESS  MAN. 


I  WILL  read  to  you  once  again  the  words  which 
I  have  read  before,  the  words  of  Jesus  in  the 
eighth  chapter  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John : 

"  As  He  spake  these  words,  many  believed  on 
Him.  Then  said  Jesus  to  those  Jews  which 
believed  on  Him,  If  ye  continue  in  My  word, 
then  are  ye  My  disciples  indeed;  and  ye  shall 
know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free.  They  answered  Him,  We  be  Abraham's 
seed,  and  were  never  in  bondage  to  any  man: 
how  sayest  Thou,  Ye  shall  be  made  free?  Jesus 
answered  them,  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you, 
Whosoever  committeth  sin  is  the  servant  of  sin. 
And  the  servant  abideth  not  in  the  house  for 
ever:  but  the  Son  abideth  ever.  If  the  Son 
therefore  shall  make  you  free,  ye  shall  be  free 
indeed." 

I  do  not  know  how  any  man  can  stand  and 
plead  with  his  brethren  for  the  higher  life,  that 
71 


21 28828 


T2  PEHFECT  FREEDOM. 

they  will  enter  into  and  make  their  own  the  life 
of  Christ  and  God,  unless  he  is  perpetually  con- 
scious that  around  them  with  whom  he  pleads 
there  is  the  perpetual  pleading  and  the  voice  of 
God  Himself.  Unless  a  man  believes  that,  every- 
thing that  he  has  to  say  must  seem,  in  the  first 
place,  impertinent,  and,  in  the  second  place, 
almost  absolutely  hopeless.  Who  is  man  that 
he  shall  plead  with  his  fellow-man  for  the  change 
of  a  life,  for  the  entrance  into  a  whole  new 
career,  for  the  alteration  of  a  spirit,  for  the  sur- 
rounding of  himself  with  a  new  region  in  which 
he  has  not  lived  before?  But  if  it  be  so,  that 
God  is  pleading  with  every  one  of  His  children 
to  enter  into  the  highest  life ;  if  it  be  so,  that 
God  is  making  His  application  and  His  appeal 
to  every  soul  to  know  Him,  and  In  Him  to  know 
himself,  then  one  may  plead  with  earnestness 
and  plead  with  great  hopefulness  before  his 
'brethren.  And  so  it  is.  The  great  truth  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  that,  that  God  is  pleading  with 
every  soul,  not  merely  in  the  words  which  we 
hear  from  one  another,  not  merely  in  the  words 
which  we  read  from  His  book,  but  in  every  influ- 
ence of  life ;  and,  in  those  unknown  influences 
which  are  too  subtle  for  us  to  understand  or 
perceive,  God  is  forever  seeking  after  the  souls 
of  His  children. 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.    73 

I  cannot  stand  before  you  for  the  last  time 
that  I  shall  stand  in  these  meetings,  my  friends, 
without  reminding  myself  and  without  remind- 
ing you  of  that ;  without  reminding  myself  also 
and  without  trying  to  remind  you  of  how  abso- 
lutely conformable  it  is  to  everything  that  man 
does  in  this  world.  The  great  richness  of  nature, 
the  great  richness  of  life,  comes  when  we  under- 
stand that  behind  every  specific  action  of  man 
there  is  some  one  of  the  more  elemental  and 
primary  forces  of  the  universe  that  are  always 
trying  to  express  themselves.  There  is  nothing 
that  man  does  that  finds  its  beginning  within 
itself,  but  everything,  every  work  of  every  trade, 
of  every  occupation,  is  simply  the  utterance  of 
some  one  of  those  great  forces  which  lie  behind 
all  life,  and  in  the  various  ways  of  the  different 
generations  and  of  the  different  men  are  always 
trying  to  make  their  mark  upon  the  world. 
Behind  the  power  that  the  man  exercises  there 
always  lies  the  great  power  of  life,  the  continual 
struggle  of  nature  to  write  herself  in  the  life  and 
work  of  man,  the  power  of  beauty  struggling  to 
manifest  itself,  the  harmony  that  is  always 
desiring  to  make  itself  known.  To  the  merchant 
there  are  the  great  laws  of  trade,  of  which  his 
works  are  but  the  immediate  expression.  To 
the  mechanic  there  are  the  continual  forces  of 


74  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

nature,  gravitation  uttering  itself  in  all  its 
majesty,  made  no  less  majestic  because  it  simply 
takes  its  expression  for  the  moment  in  some 
particular  exercise  of  his  art.  To  the  ship  that 
sails  upon  the  sea  there  are  the  everlasting  winds 
that  come  out  of  the  treasuries  of  God  and  fulfil 
his  purpose  in  carrying  his  children  to  their 
destination.  There  is  no  perfection  of  the  uni- 
verse and  of  the  special  life  of  man  in  the  uni- 
verse until  it  comes  to  this.  The  greatest  of  all 
forces  are  ready  without  condescension,  are  ready 
as  the  true  expression  of  their  life,  to  manifest 
themselves  in  the  particular  activities  which  we 
find  everywhere,  and  which  are  going  on  every- 
where. The  little  child  digs  his  well  in  the 
seashore  sand,  and  the  great  Atlantic,  miles  deep, 
miles  wide,  is  stirred  all  through  and  through  to 
fill  it  for  him.  Shall  it  not  be  so  then  here 
to-day,  and  shall  it  not  be  the  truth,  upon  which 
(we  let  our  minds  especially  dwell,  and  which  we 
keep  in  our  souls  all  the  time  that  I  am  speaking 
and  you  are  listening,  that  however  He  may  be 
hidden  from  our  sight  God  is  the  ultimate  fact 
and  the  final  purpose  and  power  of  the  universe, 
and  that  everything  that  man  tries  to  do  for  his 
fellow-man  is  but  the  expression  of  that  love  of 
God  which  is  everywhere  struggling  to  utter 
itself  in  blessing,  to  give  itself  away  to  the  soul 
of  every  one  for  whom  He  cares? 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   75 

It  is  in  this  truth  that  I  find  the  real  secret, 
the  deepest  meaning,  of  the  everlasting  dissatis- 
faction of  man  that  is  always  ready  to  be  stirred. 
We  moralize,  we  philosophize  about  the  discon- 
tent of  man.  We  give  little  reasons  for  it ;  but 
the  real  reason  of  it  all  is  this,  that  which  every- 
thing lying  behind  it  really  signifies :  that  man 
is  greater  than  his  circumstances,  and  that  God 
is  always  calling  to  him  to  come  up  to  the  ful- 
ness of  his  life.  Dreadful  will  be  the  day  when 
the  world  becomes  contented,  when  one  great 
universal  satisfaction  spreads  itself  over  the 
world.  Sad  will  be  the  day  for  every  man  when 
he  becomes  absolutely  contented  with  the  life: 
that  he  is  living,  with  the  thoughts  that  he  is 
thinking,  with  the  deeds  that  he  is  doing,  when 
there  is  not  forever  beating  at  the  doors  of  his 
soul  some  great  desire  to  do  something  larger, 
which  he  knows  that  he  was  meant  and  made  to 
do  because  he  is  the  child  of  God.  And  there 
is  the  real  secret  of  the  man's  struggle  with  his 
sins.  It  is  not  simply  the  hatefulness  of  the 
sin,  as  we  have  said  again  and  again,  but  it  is 
the  dim  perception,  the  deep  suspicion,  the  real 
knowledge  at  the  heart  of  the  man,  that  there  i? 
a  richer  and  a  sinless  region  in  which  it  is  really 
meant  for  him  to  dwell.  Man  stands  separated 
from  that  life  of  God,  as  it  were,  by  a  great, 


76  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

thick  wall,  and  every  effort  to  put  away  his  sin, 
to  make  himself  a  nobler  and  a  purer  man,  is 
simply  his  beating  at  the  inside  of  that  door 
which  stands  between  him  and  the  life  of  God, 
which  he  knows  that  he  ought  to  be  living.  It 
is  like  the  prisoner  hidden  in  his  cave,  who  feels 
through  all  the  thick  wall  that  shuts  him  out 
from  it  the  sunlight  and  the  joyous  life  that  is 
outside,  who  knows  that  his  imprisonment  is  not 
his  true  condition,  and  so  with  every  tool  that 
his  hands  can  grasp  and  with  his  bleeding  hands 
themselves  beats  on  the  stone,  that  he  may  find 
his  way  out.  And  the  glory  and  the  beauty  of 
it  is  that  while  he  is  beating  upon  the  inside  of 
the  wall  there  is  also  a  noble  power  praying 
upon  the  outside  of  that  wall.  The  life  to  which 
he  ought  to  come  is  striving  in  its  turn,  upon  its 
side,  to  break  away  the  hindrance  that  is  keep- 
ing him  from  the  thing  he  ought  to  be,  that  is 
keeping  him  from  the  life  he  ought  to  live. 
God,  with  His  sunshine  and  lightning,  with  the 
great  majestic  manifestations  of  Himself,  and 
with  all  the  peaceful  exhibitions  of  His  life,  is 
forever  trying,  upon  His  side  of  the  wall,  to 
break  away  the  great  barrier  that  separates  the 
sinner's  life  from  Him.  Great  is  the  power, 
great  is  the  courage  of  the  sinner,  when  through 
the  thickness  of  the  walls  he  feels  that  beating 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.  77 

life  of  God,  when  he  knows  that  he  is  not  work- 
ing alone,  when  he  is  sure  that  God  is  wanting 
him  just  as  truly,  far  more  truly,  than  he  wants 
God.  He  bears  himself  to  a  nobler  struggle 
with  his  enemy  and  a  more  determined  effort  to 
break  down  the  resistance  that  stands  between 
him  and  the  higher  life.  Our  figure  is  all  imper- 
fect, as  all  our  figures  are  so  imperfect,  because 
it  seems  to  be  the  man  all  by  himself,  working 
by  himself,  until  he  shall  come  forth  into  the 
life  of  God,  as  if  God  waited  there  to  receive  him 
when  he  came  forth  the  freed  ma,n,  and  as  if  the 
working  of  the  freedom  upon  the  sinner's  side 
had  not  something  also  of  the  purpose  of  God 
within  him.  God  is  not  merely  in  the  sunshine ; 
God  is  in  the  cavern  of  the  mail's  sin.  God  is 
with  the  sinner  wherever  he  can  be.  There  is 
no  soul  so  black  in  its  sinfulness,  so  determined 
in  its  defiant  obstinacy,  that  God  has  abandoned 
his  throne  room  at  the  centre  of  the  sinner's  life, 
and  every  movement  is  the  God  movement  and 
every  effort  is  the  God  force,  with  which  man 
tries  to  break  forth  from  his  sin  and  come  forth 
into  the  full  sunlight  of  a  life  with  God.  Do 
you  not  think  how  full  of  hope  it  is?  Do  you 
not  see  that  when  this  great  conception  of  the 
universe,  which  is  Christ's  conception,  which 
beamed  in  every  look  that  He  shed  upon  the 


78  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

world,  which  was  told  in  every  word  that  He 
spoke  and  which  was  in  every  movement  of  His 
hand  —  do  you  not  see  how,  when  this  great  con- 
ception of  the  universe  takes  possession  of  a  man, 
then  all  his  struggle  with  his  sin  is  changed,  it 
becomes  a  strong  struggle,  a  glorious  struggle. 
He  hears  perpetually  the  voice  of  Christ,  "  l>e 
of  good  cheer.  I  have  overcome  the  world. 
You  shall  overcome  it  by  the  same  strength  which 
overcame  with  Me." 

And  then  another  thing.  When  a  man  comes 
forth  into  the  fulness  of  that  life  with  God, 
when  at  last  he  has  entered  God's  service  and 
the  obedience  to  God's  will,  and  the  communion 
with  God's  life,  then  there  comes  this  wonder- 
ful thing,  there  comes  the  revelation  of  the  man's 
past.  We  dare  to  tell  the  man  that  if  he  enters 
into  the  divine  life,  if  he  makes  himself  a  ser- 
vant of  God  and  does  God's  will  out  of  obedient 
love,  he  shall  then  be  strong  and  wise.  One 
great  element  of  his  strength  is  going  to  be  this : 
A  marvellous  revelation  that  is  to  come  to  him 
of  how  all  his  past  has  been  filled  with  the  power 
of  that  spirit  with  which  he  has  at  last  entered 
into  communion,  to  which  he  has  at  last  sub- 
mitted himself.  Man  becomes  the  child  of  God, 
becomes  the  servant  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  this 
marvellous  revelation  amazes  him.  He  sees  that 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   79 

back  through  all  the  years  of  his  most  obstinate 
and  careless  life,  through  all  his  wilfulness  and 
resistance,  through  all  his  profligacy  and  black 
sin,  God  has  been  with  him  all  the  time,  beat- 
ing himself  upon  his  life,  showing  him  how  He 
desired  to  call  him  to  Himself,  and  that  the 
final  submission  does  not  win  God.  It  simply 
submits  to  the  God  who  has  been  with  the  soul 
all  the  time.  Can  there  be  anything  more  win- 
ning to  the  soul  than  that,  anything  that  brings 
a  deeper  shame  to  you,  than  to  have  it  revealed 
to  you,  suddenly  or  slowly,  that  from  the  first 
day  that  you  came  into  this  world,  nay,  before 
your  life  was  an  uttered  fact  in  this  world,  God 
has  been  loving  you,  and  seeking  you,  and  plan- 
ning for  you,  and  making  every  effort  that  He 
could  make  in  consistency  with  the  free  will 
with  which  He  endowed  you  from  the  centre  of 
His  own  life,  that  you  might  become  His  and 
therefore  might  become  truly  youself  ?  Through 
all  the  years  in  which  you  were  obstinate  and 
rebellious,  through  all  the  years  in  which  you 
defied  Him,  nay,  through  the  years  in  which  you 
denied  Him  and  said  that  He  did  not  exist,  He 
was  with  you  all  the  time.  What  shall  I  say  to 
my  friend  who  is  an  atheist?  Shall  I  believe 
that  until  he  comes  to  a  change  of  his  opinions 
^nd  recognizes  that  there  is  indeed  a  ruling  love. 


gO  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

a  great  and  fatherly  God  for  all  the  world,  that  he 
has  nothing  to  do  with  that  God?  Shall  I  believe 
that  God  has  nothing  to  do  with  him  until  he 
acknowledges  God?  God  would  be  no  God  to 
me  if  He  were  that,  if  He  left  the  man  absolutely 
unhelped  until  the  man  beat  at  the  doors  of  His 
divine  helpfulness  and  said,  "  I  believe  in  Thee 
at  last.  Now  help  me."  And  to  the  atheist  there 
appears  the  light  of  the  God  whom  he  denies. 
Into  every  soul,  just  so  far  and  just  so  fast  as  it 
is  possible  for  that  soul  to  receive  it,  God  beats 
His  life  and  gives  His  help.  That  is  what  makes 
a  man  hopeful  of  all  his  fellow-men  as  he  looks 
around  upon  them  and  sees  them  in  all  the  con- 
ditions of  their  life. 

And  this  could  only  be  if  that  were  true,  if 
that  is  true,  which  we  are  dwelling  upon  con- 
stantly, the  absolute  naturalness  of  the  Christian 
life,  that  it  is  man's  true  life,  that  it  is  no  foreign 
region  into  which  some  man  may  be  transported 
and  where  he  lives  an  alien  to  all  his  own  essen- 
tial nature  and  to  all  the  natural  habitudes  in 
which  he  is  intending  to  exist.  There  are  two 
ideas  of  religion  which  always  have  abounded, 
and  our  great  hope  is,  our  great  assuranc*  for 
the  future  of  the  world  is,  that  the  true  anc  pure 
idea  of  religion  some  day  shall  grow  and  take 
possession  of  the  life  of  man.  One  idea  held 


THE  DliTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   81 

bj  very  earnest  people,  embodied  in  very  faith- 
ful and  devoted  lives,  is  the  strangeness  of  re- 
ligion to  the  life  of  man,  as  if  some  morning 
something  dropped  out  of  the  sky  that  had  had 
no  place  upon  our  earth  before,  as  if  there  came 
the  summons  to  man  to  be  something  entirely 
different  from  what  the  conditions  of  his  nature 
prophesied  and  intended  that  he  should  be. 
The  other  idea  is  that  religion  comes  by  the 
utterance  of  God  from  the  heavens,  but  comes 
up  out  of  the  human  life  of  man;  that  man  is 
essentially  and  intrinsically  religious;  that  he 
does  not  become  something  else  than  man  when 
he  becomes  the  servant  of  Jesus  Christ,  but  then 
for  the  first  time  he  becomes  man;  that  religion 
is  not  something  that  is  fastened  upon  the  out- 
side of  his  life,  but  is  the  awakening  of  the  truth 
inside  of  his  life;  the  Church  is  but  the  true 
fulfilment  of  human  life  and  society ;  heaven  is 
but  the  New  Jerusalem  that  completes  all  the 
old  Jerusalems  and  Londons  and  Bostons  that 
have  been  here  upon  our  earth.  Man,  in  the 
fulfilment  of  his  nature  by  Jesus  Christ,  is  man 
—  not  to  be  something  else,  our  whole  humanity 
is  too  dear  to  us.  I  will  cling  to  this  humanity 
of  man,  for  I  do  love  it,  and  I  will  know  nothing 
else.  But  when  man  is  bidden  to  look  back  into 
his  humanity  and  see  what  it  means  to  be  a  man, 


82  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

that  humanity  means  purity,  truthfulness,  ear* 
nestness,  and  faithfulness  to  that  God  of  which 
humanity  is  a  part,  that  God  which  manifested 
that  humanity  was  a  part  of  it,  when  the  incar- 
nation showed  how  close  the  divine  and  human 
belonged  together  —  when  man  hears  that  voice, 
I  do  not  know  how  he  can  resist,  why  he  shall 
not  lift  himself  up  and  say,  "Now  I  can  be  a 
man,  and  I  can  be  man  only  as  I  share  in  and 
give  my  obedience  to  and  enter  into  communion 
with  the  life  of  God,"  and  say  to  Christ,  to  Christ 
the  revealer  of  all  this,  "  Here  I  am,  fulfil  my 
manhood." 

And  do  not  you  see  how  immediately  this 
sweeps  aside,  as  one  gush  of  the  sunlight  sweeps 
aside  the  darkness,  do  not  you  see  how  it  sweeps 
aside  all  the  foolish  and  little  things  that  people 
are  saying?  I  say  to  my  friend,  "Be  a  Chris- 
tian." That  means  to  be  a  full  man.  And  he 
says  to  mp,  "  I  have  not  time  to  be  a  Christian. 
I  have  not  room.  If  my  life  was  not  so  full. 
You  don't  know  how  hard  I  work  from  morning 
to  night.  What  time  is  there  for  me  to  be  a 
Christian?  What  time  is  there,  what  room  is 
there  for  Christianity  in  such  a  life  as  mine?" 
But  does  not  it  come  to  seem  to  us  so  strange,  so 
absurd,  if  it  was  not  so  melancholy,  that  man 
should  say  such  a  thing  as  that?  It  is  as  if  the 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   83 

engine  had  said  it  had  no  room  for  the  steam. 
It  is  as  if  the  tree  had  said  it  had  no  room  for  the 
sap.  It  is  as  if  the  ocean  had  said  it  had  no  room 
for  the  tide.  It  is  as  if  the  inan  said  that  he  had 
no  room  for  his  soul.  It  is  as  if  life  said  that  it 
had  no  time  to  live,  when  it  is  life.  It  is  not 
something  that  is  added  to  life.  It  is  life.  A 
man  is  not  living  without  it.  And  for  a  man  to 
say  that  "  I  am  so  full  in  life  that  I  have  no  room 
for  life,"  you  see  immediately  to  what  absurdity 
it  reduces  itself.  And  how  a  man  knows  what 
he  is  called  upon  by  God's  voice,  speaking  to 
him  every  hour,  speaking  to  him  every  moment, 
speaking  to  him  out  of  everything,  that  which 
the  man  is  called  upon  to  do  because  it  is  the 
man's  only  life !  Therefore  time,  room,  that  is 
what  time,  that  is  what  room  is  for  —  life.  Life 
is  the  thing  we  seek,  and  man  finds  it  in  the  ful- 
filment of  his  life  by  Jesus  Christ. 

Now,  until  we  understand  this  and  take  it  in 
its  richness,  all  religion  seems,  becomes  to  us 
such  a  little  thing  that  it  is  not  religion  at  all. 
You  have  got  to  know  that  religion,  the  service 
of  Christ,  is  not  something  to  be  taken  in  in  ad- 
dition to  your  life;  it  is  your  life.  It  is  not  a 
ribbon  that  you  shall  tie  in  your  hat,  and  go  down 
the  street  declaring  yourself  that  you  have  ac- 
cepted something  in  addition  to  the  life  which 


84  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

your  fellow-men  are  living.  It  is  something 
which,  taken  into  your  heart,  shall  glow  in  every 
action  so  that  your  fellow-men  shall  say,  "  Lo, 
how  he  lives !  What  new  life  has  come  into 
him  ? "  It  is  that  insistence  upon  the  great 
essentialness  of  the  religious  life,  it  is  the  insist- 
ence that  religion  is  not  a  lot  of  things  that  a 
man  does,  but  is  a  new  life  that  a  man  lives, 
uttering  itself  in  new  actions  because  it  is  the 
new  life.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  again  he  can- 
not see  the  kingdom  of  God."  So  Jesus  said  to 
Nicodemus  the  ruler,  Nicodemus  the  amateur  in 
religions,  who  came  and  said,  "Perhaps  this 
teacher  has  something  else  that  I  can  bind  into 
my  catalogue  of  truths  and  hold  it."  Jesus 
looked  him  in  the  face  and  said  :  "  It  is  not  that, 
my  friend,  it  is  not  that ;  it  is  to  be  a  new  man, 
it  is  to  be  born  again.  It  is  to  have  the  new 
life,  which  is  the  old  life,  which  is  the  eternal 
life.  So  alone  does  man  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  God."  I  cannot  help  believing  all  the 
time  that  if  our  young  men  knew  this,  religion 
would  lift  itself  up  and  have  a  dignity  and  great- 
ness—  not  a  thing  for  weak  souls,  but  a  thing 
for  the  manliest  soul.  Just  because  of  its  man- 
liness it  is  easy.  "Is  it  easy  or  is  it  hard,  this 
religion  of  yours  ?  "  people  say  to  us.  I  am  sure 
I  do  not  know  the  easy  and  the  hard  things.  I 


THE  DUTY   OF   THE   BUSINESS  MAN.  85 

cannot  tell  the  difference.  What  is  easier  than 
for  a  man  to  breathe  ?  And  yet,  have  you  never 
seen  a  breathless  man,  a  man  in  whom  the  breath- 
ing was  almost  stopped,  a  drowning  man,  an 
exhausted  man  ?  have  you  never  seen,  when  the 
breath  was  put  once  more  to  his  nostrils  and 
bi ought  down  once  more  into  his  empty  lungs, 
the  struggle  with  which  he  came  back  to  it?  It 
was  the  hardest  thing  for  him  to  do,  so  much 
harder  for  him  to  live  than  it  was  for  him  to  die 
But  by  and  by  see  him  on  his  feet,  going  about 
his  work,  helping  his  fellow-men,  living  his  life, 
rejoicing  in  his  days,  guarding  against  his  dan- 
gers, full  of  life.  Is  life  a  hard  thing  for  him  ? 
You  don't  talk  about  its  being  hard  or  easy  any 
more  than  you  talk  about  life  itself.  The  man 
who  lives  in  God  knows  no  life  except  the  life 
of  God.  Let  men  know  that  it  is  not  mere 
trifling,  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  dallied  with  for 
an  instant,  it  is  not  a  thing  for  a  man  to  con- 
vince himself  by  an  argument,  and  then  keep  as 
it  were  locked  in  a  shelf :  it  is  something  that  is 
so  deep  and  serious,  so  deep  and  serious  that 
when  a  man  has  once  tested  it  there  is  no  more 
chance  of  his  going  out  of  it  than  there  is  of  his 
going  out  of  the  friendship  and  the  love  which 
holds  him  with  its  perpetual  expression,  with 
the  continued  deeper  and  deeper  manifestation 


86  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

of  the  way  in  which  the  living  being  belongs  to 
him  who  has  a  right  to  his  life. 

Now  in  the  few  moments  that  remain  I  want 
to  take  it  for  granted  most  seriously,  most  ear- 
nestly, that  the  men  who  are  listening  to  me  are 
in  earnest,  and  I  want  to  try  to  tell  them  as  a 
brother  might  tell  a  brother,  as  I  might  tell  to 
you  or  try  to  tell  to  you  if  sitting  before  my  fire- 
side, I  want  to  try  to  answer  the  question  which 
I  know  is  upon  your  hearts.  "  What  shall  I  do 
about  this?"  I  know  you  say.  "Is  this  all  in 
the  clouds?  Is  there  anything  I  can  do  in  the 
right  way?"  If  you  are  in  earnest,  I  shall  try 
to  tell  you  what  I  should  do,  if  I  were  in  your 
place,  that  I  might  enter  into  that  life  and  be 
the  free  man  that  we  have  tried  to  describe,  of 
whom  we  believe  certain  special  and  definite 
things.  What  are  they?  In  the  first  place  I 
would  put  away  my  sin.  There  is  not  a  man 
listening  to  me  now  who  has  not  some  trick  of 
life,  some  habit  that  has  possession  of  him,  which 
he  knows  is  a  wrong  thing.  The  very  first  thing 
for  a  man  to  do  is  absolutely  to  set  himself 
against  them.  If  you  are  foul,  stop  being  licen- 
tious, at  least  stop  doing  licentious  things.  If 
you,  in  any  part  of  your  business,  are  tricky, 
and  unsound,  and  unjust,  cut  that  off,  no  matter 
what  it  costs  you.  There  is  something  clear  and 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.    87 

definite  enough  for  every  man.  It  is  as  clear  for 
every  man  as  the  sunlight  that  smites  him  in  his 
eyes.  Stop  doing  the  bad  thing  which  you  are 
doing.  It  is  drawing  the  bolt  away  to  let  what- 
ever mercy  may  come  in  come  in.  Stop  doing 
your  sin.  You  can  do  that  if  you  will.  Stop 
doing  your  sin,  no  matter  how  mechanical  it 
seems,  and  then  take  up  your  duty,  whatever 
you  can  do  to  make  the  world  more  bright  and 
good.  Do  whatever  you  can  to  help  every  strug- 
gling soul,  to  add  new  strength  to  any  staggering 
cause,  the  poor  sick  man  that  is  by  you,  the  poor 
wronged  man  whom  you  with  your  influence 
might  vindicate,  the  poor  boy  in  your  shop  that 
you  may  set  with  new  hope  upon  the  road  of  life 
that  is  beginning  already  to  look  dark  to  him. 
I  cannot  tell  you  what  it  is.  But  you  know  your 
duty.  No  man  ever  looked  for  it  and  did  not 
find  it. 

And  then  the  third  thing  —  pray.  Yes,  go  to 
the  God  whom  you  but  dimly  see  and  pray  to 
Him  in  the  darkness,  where  He  seems  to  sit. 
Ask  Him,  as  if  He  were,  that  He  will  give  you 
that  which,  if  He  is,  must  come  from  Him,  can 
come  from  Him  alone.  Pray  anxiously.  Pray 
passionately,  in  the  simplest  of  all  words,  with 
the  simplest  of  all  thoughts.  Pray,  the  manli- 
est thing  that  a  man  can  do,  the  fastening  of  his 


88  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

life  to  the  eternal,  the  drinking  of  his  thirsty 
soul  out  of  the  great  fountain  of  life.  And  pray 
distinctly.  Pray  upon  your  knees.  One  grows 
tired  sometimes  of  the  free  thought,  which  is  yet 
perfectly  true,  that  a  man  can  pray  anywhere 
and  anyhow.  But  men  have  found  it  good  to 
make  the  whole  system  pray.  Kneel  down,  and 
the  very  bending  of  these  obstinate  and  unused 
knees  of  yours  will  make  the  soul  kneel  down  in 
the  humility  in  which  it  can  be  exalted  in  the 
sight  of  God. 

And  then  read  your  Bible.  How  cold  that 
sounds!  What,  read  a  book  to  save  my  soul? 
Eead  an  old  story  that  my  life  in  these  new  days 
shall  be  regenerated  and  saved?  Yes,  do  just 
that,  for  out  of  that  book,  if  you  read  it  truly, 
shall  come  the  divine  and  human  person.  If 
you  can  read  it  with  your  soul  as  well  as  with 
your  eyes,  there  shall  come  the  Christ  there  walk- 
ing in  Palestine.  You  shall  see  Him  so  much 
greater  than  the  Palestine  in  which  he  walks, 
that  at  one  word  of  prayer,  as  you  bend  over  the 
illuminated  page,  there  shall  lift  up  that  body- 
being  of  the  Christ,  and  come  down  through  the 
centuries  and  be  your  helper  at  your  side.  So 
read  your  Bible. 

And  then  seek  the  Church  —  oh,  yes,  the 
Church.  Do  you  think,  my  friends,  you  who 


THE  DUTY   OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.    89 

stand  outside  the  Church,  and  blame  her  for  her 
inconsistencies,  and  tell  of  her  shortcomings,  and 
point  out  the  corruptions  that  are  in  her  history, 
all  that  are  in  her  present  life  to-day  —  do  you 
really  believe  that  there  is  an  earnest  man  in  the 
Church  that  does  not  know  the  Church's  weak- 
nesses and  faults  just  as  well  as  you  do?  Do  you 
believe  that  there  is  one  of  us  living  in  the  life 
and  heart  of  the  Church  who  don't  think  with  all 
his  conscience,  who  don't  in  every  day  in  deep 
distress  and  sorrow  know  how  the  Church  fails  of 
the  great  life  of  the  Master,  how  far  she  is  from 
being  what  God  meant  she  should  be,  what  she 
'shall  be  some  day?  But  all  the  more  I  will  put 
my  life  into  that  Church,  all  the  more  I  will 
drink  the  strength  that  she  can  give  to  me  and 
make  what  humble  contribution  to  her  I  can 
bring  of  the  earnestness  and  faithfulness  of  my 
life.  Come  into  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ. 
There  is  no  other  body  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
that  represents  what  she  represents  —  the  noble 
destiny  of  the  human  soul,  the  great  capacity  of 
human  faith,  the  inexhaustible  and  unutterable 
love  of  God,  the  Christ,  who  stands  to  manifest 
them  all. 

Now  those  are  the  things  for  a  man  to  do  who 
really  cares  about  all  this.  Those  are  the  things 
for  an  earnest  man  to  do.  They  have  no  power 


90  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

in  themselves,  but  they  are  the  opening  of  the 
windows.  And  if  that  which  I  believe  is  true, 
God  is  everywhere  giving  himself  to  us,  the 
opening  of  the  windows  is  a  signal  that  we  want 
Him  and  an  invitation  that  He  will  be  glad 
enough  to  answer,  to  come.  Into  every  window 
that  is  open  to  Him  and  turned  His  way,  Christ 
comes,  God  comes.  That  is  the  only  story. 
There  is  put  aside  everything  else.  Election, 
predestination,  they  can  go  where  they  please. 
I  am  sure  that  God  gives  Himself  to  every  soul 
that  wants  Him  and  declares  its  want  by  the 
open  readiness  of  the  signal  which  He  knows. 
How  did  the  sun  rise  on  our  city  this  morning? 
Starting  up  in  the  east,  the  sun  came  in  its 
majesty  into  the  sky.  It  smote  on  the  eastward 
windows,  and  wherever  the  window  was  all 
closed,  even  if  it  were  turned  eastward,  on  the 
sacred  side  of  the  city's  life,  it  could  not  come 
in ;  but  wherever  any  eastward  window  had  its 
curtains  drawn,  wherever  he  who  slept  had  left 
the  blinds  shut,  so  that  the  sun  when  it  came 
might  find  its  way  into  his  sleepiness,  there  the 
sun  came,  and  with  a  shout  awoke  its  faithful 
servant  who  had  believed  in  him  even  before  he 
had  seen  him,  and  said,  "Arise,  arise  from  the 
dead,  and  I  will  give  thee  life."  This  is  t«e 
simplicity  of  it  all,  my  friends.  A  multitude  H 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   91 

ot»-3r  things  you  need  not  trouble  yourselves 
about.  I  amaze  myself  when  I  think  how  men 
go  asking  about  the  questions  of  eternal  punish- 
ment and  the  duration  of  man's  torment  in 
another  life,  of  what  will  happen  to  any  man 
who  does  not  obey  Jesus  Christ.  Oh,  my 
friends,  the  soul  is  all  wrong  when  it  asks  that. 
Not  until  the  soul  says,  "  What  will  come  if  I  do 
obey  Jesus  Christ?"  and  opens  its  glorified 
vision  to  see  all  the  great  things  that  are  given  to 
the  soul  that  enters  into  the  service  of  the  perfect 
one,  the  perfect  love,  not  until  then  the  perfect 
love,  the  perfect  life,  come  in.  A  man  may  be 
—  I  believe  it  with  all  my  heart  —  so  absolutely 
wrapped  up  in  the  glory  of  obedience,  and  the 
higher  life,  and  the  service  of  Christ,  that  he 
never  once  asks  himself,  "  What  will  come  to  me 
if  I  do  not  obey?  "  any  more  than  your  child  asks 
you  what  you  will  do  to  him  if  he  is  not  obedi- 
ent. Every  impulse  and  desire  of  his  life  sets 
toward  obedience.  And  so  the  soul  may  have 
no  theory  of  everlasting  or  of  limited  punish- 
ment, or  of  the  other  life. 

Simply  now,  here,  he  must  have  that  without 
which  he  cannot  live,  that  without  which  there 
is  no  life.  Jesus  the  soul  must  have,  the  one 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever;  He  that  is  and 
'vas  and  is  to  be.  Men  dwell  upon  what  He  was, 


92  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

upon  what  He  is ;  I  rather  think  to-day  of  what 
He  is  to  be.  And  when  I  see  these  young  men 
here  before  me  looking  to  the  future  and  not  to 
the  pas% — nay,  looking  to  the  future  and  not  to 
the  present,  valuing  the  present  only  ass  it  is  the 
seed  ground  of  the  future,  the  foundation  upon 
jvhich  the  structure  is  to  rise  whose  pinnacle 
shall  some  day  pierce  the  sky, —  I  want  to  tell 
them  of  the  Jesus  that  shall  be.  'In  fuller  com- 
prehension of  Him,  with  deeper  understanding 
of  His  life,  with  a  more  entire  impression  of 
what  He  is  and  of  what  He  may  be  to  the  soul, 
so  men  shall  understand  Him  in  the  days  to  be, 
and  yet  He  shall  be  the  same  Christ  still.  The 
future  belongs  to  Jesus  Christ,  yes,  the  same 
Christ  that  I  believe  in  and  that  I  call  upon  you 
to  believe  in  to-day,  but  a  larger,  fuller,  more 
completely  comprehended  Christ,  the  Christ  that 
is  to  be,  the  same  Christ  that  was  and  suffered, 
the  same  Christ  that  is  and  helps,  but  the  same 
Christ  also  who,  being  forever  deeper  ana  deeper 
and  more  deeply  received  into  the  souls  of  men, 
regenerates  their  institutions,  changes  their  life, 
opens  their  capacities,  surprises  them  with  them- 
selves, makes  the  world  glorious  and  joyous 
every  day,  because  it  has  become  the  new  incar- 
nation, the  new  presence  of  the  divine  life  in 
the  life  of  man. 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.    93 

Men  are  talking  about  the  institutions  in  which 
you  are  engaged,  my  friends,  about  the  business 
from  which  you  have  come  here  to  worship  for 
this  little  hour.  Men  are  questioning  about 
what  they  care  to  do,  what  they  can  have  to  d& 
with  Christianity.  They  are  asking  everywhere 
this  question .  "  Is  it  possible  for  a  man  to  be 
engaged  in  the  activities  of  our  modern  life  and 
yet  to  be  a  Christian?  Is  it  possible  for  a  man 
to  be  a  broker,  a  shopkeeper,  a  lawyer,  a  me- 
chanic, is  it  possible  for  a  man  to  be  engaged  in 
a  business  of  to-day,  and  yet  love  his  God  and 
his  fellow-man  as  himself?  "  I  do  not  know,  I 
do  not  know  what  transformations  these  dear 
businesses  of  yours  have  got  to  undergo  before 
they  shall  be  true  and  ideal  homes  for  the  child 
of  God;  but  I  do  know  that  upon  Christian  mer- 
chants and  Christian  brokers  and  Christian  law- 
yers and  Christian  men  in  business  to-day  there 
rests  an  awful  and  a  beautiful  responsibility :  to 
prove,  if  you  can  prove  it,  that  these  things  are 
capable  of  being  made  divine,  to  prove  that  a 
man  can  do  the  work  that  you  have  been  doing 
this  morning  and  will  do  this  afternoon,  and  yet 
shall  love  his  God  and  his  fellow-man  as  himself. 
If  he  cannot,  if  he  cannot,  what  business  have 
you  to  be  doing  them?  If  he  can,  what  business 
have  you  to  be  doing  them  so  poorly,  so  carnally, 


94  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

so  unspiritually,  that  men  look  on  them  ana 
shake  their  heads  with  doubt?  It  belongs  to 
Christ  in  men  first  to  prove  that  man  may  be  a 
Christian  and  yet  do  business ;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  to  show  how  a  man,  as  he  becomes  a 
greater  Christian,  shall  purify  and  lift  the  busi- 
ness that  he  does  and  make  it  the  worthy  occu- 
pation of  the  Son  of  God. 

What  shall  be  our  universal  law  of  life?  Can 
we  give  it  as  we  draw  toward  our  last  moment? 
I  think  we  can.  I  want  to  live,  I  want  to  live, 
if  God  will  give  me  help,  such  a  life  that,  if  all 
men  in  the  world  were  living  it,  this  world 
would  be  regenerated  and  saved.  I  want  to  live 
such  a  life  that,  if  that  life  changed  into  new 
personal  peculiarities  as  it  went  to  different 
men,  but  the  same  life  still,  if  every  man  were 
living  it,  the  millennium  would  be  here;  nay, 
heaven  would  be  here,  the  universal  presence  of 
God.  Are  you  living  that  life  now?  Do  you 
want  your  life  multiplied  by  the  thousand  mill- 
ion so  that  all  men  shall  be  like  you,  or  don't 
you  shudder  at  the  thought,  don't  you  give  hope 
that  other  men  are  better  than  you  are?  Keep 
that  fear,  but  only  that  it  may  be  the  food  of  a 
diviner  hope,  that  all  the  world  may  see  in  you 
the  thing  that  man  was  meant  to  be,  that  is,  the 
Christ.  An,  you  say,  that  great  world,  it  is  too 


THE  DUTY  OF  THE  BUSINESS  MAN.   95 

big;  how  can  I  stretch  my  thought  and  imagina- 
tion and  conscience  to  the  poor  creatures  in 
Africa  and  everywhere?  Then  bring  it  home. 
Ah,  this  dear  city  of  ours,  this  city  that  we 
love,  this  city  in  which  many  of  us  were  born, 
in  which  all  of  us  are  finding  the  rich  and  sweet 
associations  of  our  life,  this  city  whose  very 
streets  we  love  because  they  come  so  close  to 
everything  we  do  and  are,  cannot  we  do  some- 
thing for  it?  Cannot  we  make  its  life  diviner? 
Cannot  we  contribute  something  that  it  has  not 
to-day?  Cannot  you  put  in  it,  some  little  corner 
of  it,  a  life  which  others  shall  see  and  say,  "  Ah, 
that  our  lives  may  be  like  that ! "  And  then  the 
good  Boston  in  which  we  so  rejoice,  which  we 
so  love,  which  we  would  so  fain  make  a  part  of 
the  kingdom  of  God,  a  true  city  of  Jesus  Christ, 
we  shall  not  die  without  having  done  something 
for  it. 

I  linger,  and  yet  I  must  not  linger.  Oh,  my 
friends,  oh,  my  fellow-men,  it  is  not  very  long 
ihat  we  shall  be  here.  It  is  not  very  long.  This 
iife  for  which  we  are  so  careful  —  it  is  not  very 
long;  and  yet  it  is  so  long,  because,  long,  long 
after  we  have  passed  away  out  of  men's  sight  and 
out  of  men's  memory,  the  world,  with  something 
that  we  have  left  upon  it,  that  we  have  left  within 
it,  will  be  going  on  still.  It  is  so  long  because, 


96  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

long  after  the  city  and  the  world  have  passed 
away,  we  shall  go  on  somewhere,  somehow,  the 
same  beings  still,  carrying  into  the  depths  of 
eternity  something  that  this  world  has  done  for  us 
that  no  other  world  could  do,  something  of  good- 
ness to  get  now  that  will  be  of  value  to  us  a  mill- 
ion years  hence,  that  we  never  could  get  unless 
we  got  it  in  the  short  years  of  this  earthly  life. 
Will  you  know  it?  Will  you  let  Christ  teach  it 
to  you?  Will  you  let  Christ  tell  you  what  is  the 
perfect  man?  Will  you  let  Him  set  His  sim- 
plicity and  graciousness  close  to  your  life,  and 
will  you  feel  their  power?  Oh!  be  brave,  be 
true,  be  pure,  be  men,  be  men  in  the  power  of 
Jesus  Christ.  May  God  bless  you!  May  God 
bless  you !  Let  us  pray. 


TRUE    LIBERTY. 


AN  earnest  appeal  to  all  that  enter  that  Lib- 
erty. May  I  read  to  you  a  few  words  from  the 
eighth  chapter  of  St.  John?  "  Then  said  Jesus 
to  those  Jews  which  believed  on  Him,  If  ye 
continue  in  my  word,  then  are  ye  my  disciples 
indeed;  and  ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  shall  make  you  free." 

Let  us  not  think,  my  friends,  that  there  is 
anything  strange  about  the  spectacle  which  we 
witnessed  this  morning.  The  only  strange  thing 
that  there  could  be  about  it  is  that  anybody 
should  think  that  it  is  strange  that  men  should 
turn  aside  for  half  an  hour  from  their  ordinary 
business  pursuits,  that  they  should  come  from 
the  details  of  life  to  inquire  in  regard  to  the 
principles,  the  everlasting  principles  and  pur- 
poses of  life;  that  they  should  turn  aside  from 
those  things  which  are  occupying  them  from  day 
to  day  and  make  one  single  hour  in  the  week 
consecrated  to  the  service  of  those  great  things 
97 


98  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

wkich  underlie  all  life  —  surely  there  is  nothing 
very  strange.  There  is  nothing  more  absolutely 
natural.  Every  man  does  it  in  his  own  sort  of 
way,  in  his  own  choice  of  time.  We  have  chosen 
to  do  it  together,  on  one  day  of  the  week  during 
these  few  weeks  which  the  Christian  Church  has 
so  largely  set  apart  for  special  thought  and  prayer 
and  earnest  attempt  to  approach  the  God  to  whom 
we  belong.  It  is  simply  as  if  the  stream  turned 
back  again  to  its  fountain,  that  it  might  refresh 
itself  and  make  itself  strong  for  the  great  work 
that  it  had  to  do  in  watering  the  fields  and  turn- 
ing the  wheels  of  industry.  It  is  simply  as  if 
men  plodding  along  over  the  flat  routine  of  tneir 
life  chose  once  in  a  while  to  go  up  into  the  moun- 
tain top,  whence  they  might  once  in  a  while  look 
abroad  over  their  life,  and  understand  more  fully 
the  way  in  which  they  ought  to  work.  These 
are  the  principles,  these  are  the  pictures  which 
represent  that  which  we  have  in  mind  as  we 
come  together  for  a  little  while  each  Monday  in 
these  few  weeks,  in  order  that  we  may  think 
about  things  of  God  and  try  to  realize  the  depth 
of  our  own  human  life.  The  first  thing  that  we 
ought  to  understand  about  it  is  that  when  we 
turn  aside  from  life  it  is  only  that  we  go  deeper 
into  life.  This  hour  does  not  stand  apart  from 
the  rest  of  the  hours  of  the  week,  in  that  we  are 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  99 

dealing  with  things  in  which  the  rest  of  the  week 
has  no  concern.  He  who  understands  life  deeply 
and  fully,  understands  life  truly ;  he  has  forever 
renewed  his  life;  and  if  there  comes  into  our 
hearts,  in  the  life  which  we  are  living,  a  perpet- 
ual sense  that  life  needs  renewal,  a  richening  and 
refreshing,  then  it  is  in  order  that  we  may  go 
down  into  the  depths  and  see  what  lies  at  the 
root  of  things  —  things  that  we  are  perpetually 
doing  and  thinking.  It  is  this  that  brought  us 
together  here:  it  is  that  we  may  open  to  our- 
selves some  newer,  higher  life.  It  is  that  we 
may  understand  the  life  that  we  may  live,  along 
side  of  and  as  a  richer  development  of  that  life 
which  we  are  living  from  day  to  day,  which  we 
have  been  living  during  the  years  of  our  life. 
How  that  idea  has  haunted  men  in  every  period 
of  their  existence,  how  is  it  haunting  you,  that 
there  is  some  higher  life  which  it  is  possible  to 
live!  There  has  never  been  a  religion  that  has 
not  started  there,  lifted  up  its  eyes  and  seen,  afar 
off,  what  it  was  possible  for  man  to  do  from  day 
to  day,  in  contrast  with  the  things  which  men 
immediately  and  presently  are.  There  is  not 
any  moment  of  the  human  soul  which  has  not 
rested  upon  some  great  conception  that  man  was 
a  nobler  being  than  he  was  ordinarily  conceiving 
himself  to  be ;  that  he  was  not  destined  to  the 


100  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

things  which  were  ordinarily  occupying  his  life ; 
that  he  might  be  living  a  greater  and  nobler  life. 
It  is  because  the  Christian  Scriptures  have  laid 
most  earnestly  hold  of  this  idea,  it  is  because  it 
was  represented  not  simply  in  the  words  which 
Christ  said,  but  in  the  very  being  which  Christ 
was,  that  we  go  to  them  to  get  the  inspiration 
and  the  indication,  the  revelation  and  the  enlight- 
enment which  we  need.  I  have  read  to  you  these 
few  words  in  which  Christ  declares  the  whole 
subject,  the  whole  character  of  which  His  life  is 
and  what  His  work  is  about  to  do,  because  it 
seems  to  me  that  they  strike  at  once  the  key-note 
of  that  which  we  want  to  understand.  They  let 
us  enter  into  the  full  conception  of  that  which 
the  new  life  which  is  offered  to  man  really  is. 
There  are  two  conceptions  which  come  to  every 
man  when  he  is  entering  upon  a  new  life,  chang- 
ing his  present  life  to  something  that  is  different 
from  the  present  life,  and  being  a  different  sort  of 
creature  and  living  in  a  different  sort  of  a  way. 
The  first  way  in  which  it  presents  itself  to  him 
—  almost  always  at  the  beginning  of  every  re- 
ligion, perhaps  —  is  in  the  way  of  restraint  and 
imprisonment.  Man  thinks  of  every  change  that 
is  to  come  to  him  as  in  the  nature  of  denial  of 
something  that  he  is  at  the  present  doing  and 
being,  as  the  laying  hold  upon  himself  of  some 


TRUE   LIBERTY.  101 

sort  of  restraint,  bringing  to  him  something 
which  says :  "  I  must  not  do  the  thing  which  I 
am  doing.  I  must  lay  upon  myself  restraints, 
restrictions,  commandments,  and  prohibitions. 
I  must  not  let  myself  be  the  man  that  I  am." 
You  see  how  the  Old  Testament  comes  before 
the  New  Testament,  the  law  ringing  from  the 
mountain  top  with  the  great  denials,  the  great 
prohibitions,  that  come  from  the  mouth  of  God. 
"  Thou  shalt  not  do  this,  that,  or  the  other  — 
Thou  shalt  not  murder.  Thou  shalt  not  steal. 
Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery.  Thou  shalt  not 
covet  thy  neighbor's  goods."  That  is  the  first 
conception  which  comes  to  a  man  of  the  way  in 
.vhieh  he  is  to  enter  upon  a  new  life,  of  the  way 
in  which  the  denial  in  his  experience  is  to  take 
effect.  It  is  as  if  the  hands  were  stretched  out 
in  order  that  fetters  might  be  placed  upon  them. 
The  man  says,  "Let  some  power  come  that  is  to 
hinder  me  from  being  this  thing  that  I  am." 
And  the  whole  notion  is  the  notion  of  imprison- 
ment, restraint.  So  it  is  with  all  civilization. 
It  is  perfectly  possible  for  us  to  represent  civil- 
ization as  compared  with  barbarism,  as  accepted 
by  mankind,  as  a  great  mass  of  restrictions  and 
prohibitions  that  have  been  laid  upon  human 
life,  so  that  the  freedom  of  life  has  been  cast 
aside,  and  man  has  entered  into  restricted,  re- 


102  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

strained,  and  imprisoned  condition.  So  it  is 
with  every  fulfilment  of  life.  It  is  possible  for 
a  man  always  to  represent  it  to  himself  as  if  it 
were  the  restriction,  restraint,  and  prohibition  of 
his  life.  The  man  passes  onward  into  the  fuller 
life  which  belongs  to  a  man.  He  merges  his 
selfishness  into  that  richer  life  which  is  offered 
to  human  kind.  He  makes  himself,  instead  of  a 
single,  selfish  man,  a  man  of  family;  and  it  is 
easy  enough  to  consider  that  marriage  and  the 
family  life  bring  immediately  restraints  and  pro- 
hibitions. The  man  may  may  not  have  the  free- 
dom which  he  used  to  have.  So  all  development 
of  education,  in  the  first  place,  offers  itself  to 
man,  or  seems  to  offer  itself  to  man,  as  prohibi- 
tion and  imprisonment  and  restraint.  There 
is  no  doubt  truth  in  such  an  idea.  We  never 
lose  sight  of  it.  No  other  richer  and  fuller  idea 
which  we  come  to  by  and  by  ever  does  away  with 
the  thought  that  man's  advance  means  prohibi- 
tion and  self-denial,  that  in  order  that  man  shall 
become  the  greater  thing  he  must  cease  to  be  the 
poorer  and  smaller  thing  he  has  been.  But  yet 
there  is  immediately  a  greater  and  fuller.  When 
we  hear  those  words  of  Jesus,  we  see  immediately 
that  not  the  idea  of  imprisonment  but  the  idea 
of  liberty,  not  the  idea  of  restraint  but  that  of 
setting  free,  is  the  idea  which  is  really  in  His 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  103 

mind  when  he  offers  the  fullest  life  to  human 
fcind.  Have  you  often  thought  of  how  the  whole 
Bible  is  a  Book  of  Liberty,  of  how  it  rings  with 
liberty  from  beginning  to  end,  of  how  the  great 
men  are  the  men  of  liberty,  of  how  the  Old 
Testament,  the  great  picture  which  forever 
shines,  is  the  emancipator,  leading  forth  out  of 
imprisonment  the  people  of  God,  who  were  to  do 
the  great  work  of  God  in  the  very  much  larger 
and  freer  life  in  which  they  were  to  live?  The 
prophet,  the  psalmist,  are  ever  preaching  and 
singing  about  liberty,  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  life  of  man,  that  man  was  not  imprisoned  in 
order  to  fulfil  himself,  but  shall  open  his  life, 
and  every  new  progress  shall  be  into  a  new 
region  of  existence  which  he  has  not  touched  as 
yet.  When  we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New  Testament,  how  absolutely  clear  that 
idea  is!  Christ  is  the  very  embodiment  of 
human  liberty.  In  His  own  personal  life  and 
in  everything  that  He  did  and  said,  He  was  for- 
ever uttering  the  great  gospel  that  man,  in  order 
to  become  his  completest,  must  become  his  freest, 
that  what  a  man  did  when  he  entered  into  a  new 
life  was  to  open  a  new  region  in  which  new 
powers  were  to  find  their  exercise,  in  which  he 
was  to  be  able  to  be  and  do  things  which  he  could 
not  be  and  do  in  more  restricted  life.  It  it  th« 


104  PEUFECT  FREEDOM. 

acceptance  of  that  idea,  it  seems  to  me,  that 
makes  us  true  disciples  of  Christ  and  of  that 
great  gospel,  and  that  transfigures  everything. 
When  my  friend  turns  over  some  new  leaf,  as  we 
say,  and  begins  to  live  a  new  life,  what  shall  we 
think  of  him?  I  learn  that  he  has  become  a 
Christian  man,  that  he  is  doing  something,  that 
he  is  working  in  a  way  and  living  a  life  which 
I  have  not  known  before.  What  is  my  impres- 
sion in  regard  to  him?  Is  not  your  impression, 
as  you  look  upon  that  man,  that  somehow  or 
c;; her  he  has  entered  into  a  slavery  or  bondage, 
that  he  has  taken  upon  his  life  restrictions  and 
imprisonments  which  he  did  not  have  before? 
And  you  think  of  him,  perhaps,  as  a  man  who 
has  done  a  wise  and  prudent  thing,  who  has  done 
something  that  is  going  to  be  for  his  benefit 
some  day  in  some  distant  and  half -realized  world, 
but  as  a  man  who,  for  the  present,  has  laid  a 
burden  and  bondage  upon  his  life.  That  is 
never  the  tone  of  Christ;  it  is  never  the  tone  of 
the  Christian  gospel.  When  a  man  turns  away 
from  his  sins  and  enters  into  energetic  holiness, 
when  a  man  sacrifices  his  own  self-indulgence  and 
goes  forth  a  pure  seryant  of  his  God  and  his  fel- 
low-men, there  is  only  one  cry  in  the  whole  gos- 
jpel.of  that  man,  and  that  is  the, cry  of  freedom. 
As  soon  as  M  fcBtoBttek &&£•£&&  sopn  as  I  .can 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  105 

feel  about  my  friend,  who  has  become  a  better 
man,  that  he  has  become  a  larger  and  not  a 
smaller,  a  freer  and  not  a  more  imprisoned  man, 
as  soon  as  I  lift  up  my  voice  and  say  that  the 
man  is  free,  then  I  understand  him  more  fully, 
and  he  becomes  a  revelation  to  me  in  the  higher 
and  richer  life  which  is  possible  for  me  to  live. 
But  think  of  it  for  yourselves,  for  a  moment,  and 
ask  what  freer  life  really  is.  Try  to  give  a  defi- 
nition of  liberty,  and  I  know  not  what  it  can  be 
said  to  be  except  something  of  this  kind :  Liberty 
is  the  fullest  opportunity  for  man  to  be  and  do 
the  very  best  that  is  possible  for  him.  I  know 
of  no  definition  of  liberty,  that  oldest  and  dearest 
phrase  of  men,  and  sometimes  the  vaguest  also, 
except  that.  It  has  been  perverted,  it  has  been 
distorted  and  mystified,  but  that  is  what  it  really 
means :  the  fullest  opportunity  for  a  man  to  do 
and  be  the  very  best  that  is  in  his  personal 
nature  to  do  and  to  be.  It  immediately  follows 
that  everything  which  is  necessary  for  the  full 
realization  of  a  man's  life,  even  though  it  seems 
to  have  the  character  of  restraint  for  a  moment, 
is  really  a  part  of  the  process  of  his  enfranchise- 
ment, is  the  bringing  forth  of  him  to  a  fuller 
liberty.  You  see  a  man  coming  forward  and 
offering  himself  as  one  of  the  defenders  of  his 
country  in  his  country's  need.  You  see  him 


106  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

standing  at  the  door  where  men  are  being  re« 
ceived  as  recruits  into  the  army  of  the  coun- 
try. He  wants  liberty.  He  wants  to  be  able 
to  do  that  which  he  cannot  do  in  his  poor,  per- 
sonal isolation  here  at  home.  He  wants  the 
badge  which  will  give  him  the  right  to  go  forth 
and  meet  the  enemies  of  his  country,  and  he 
enrolls  himself  among  these  men.  He  makes 
himself  subject  to  obligations,  duties,  and  drill. 
They  are  a  part  of  his  enfranchisement.  They 
are  really  the  breaking  of  the  fetters  upon  his 
slavery,  the  sending  him  forth  into  freedom. 
He  is  like  a  bit  of  iron  or  steel  that  lies  upon 
the  ground.  It  lies  neglected  and  perfectly  free. 
You  see  it  is  made  by  the  adjustment  of  the  end 
of  it  so  that  it  can  be  set  into  a  great  machine 
and  become  part  of  a  great  working  system.  But 
there  it  lies.  Will  you  call  it  free?  It  is  bound 
to  be  nothing  there.  It  is  absolutely  separate, 
and  with  its  own  personality  distinct  and  indi- 
vidual and  all  alone.  What  is  to  make  that  bit 
of  iron  a  free  bit  of  iron,  to  let  it  go  forth  and  do 
the  thing  which  it  was  meant  to  do,  but  the  tak- 
ing of  it  and  the  binding  of  it  at  both  ends  into 
the  structure  of  which  it  was  made  to  be  a  part? 
It  seems  to  me  the  binding  of  a  man, — it  seems  to 
me  that  the  binding  of  the  iron  is  not  the  yield- 
ing of  its  freedom.  It  is  not  merely  after  finding 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  107 

its  place  within  the  system  that  it  first  achieves 
its  freedom  and  so  joins  in  the  music  and  par- 
takes of  the  courses  with  which  the  whole  en* 
ginery  is  filled.  Is  not  it,  then,  for  the  first  time 
a  free  bit  of  iron,  having  accomplished  all  that 
it  was  made  to  do  when  it  came  forth  from  the 
forge  of  the  master,  who  had  this  purpose  in  his 
mind?  This,  then,  is  freedom;  everything  is 
part  of  the  enfranchisement  of  a  man  which 
helps  to  put  him  in  the  place  where  he  can  live 
his  best.  Therefore  every  duty,  every  will  of 
God,  every  commandment  of  Christ,  every  self- 
surrender  that  a  man  is  called  upon  to  obey  or 
to  make  —  do  not  think  of  it  as  if  it  were  simply 
a  restraint  to  liberty,  but  think  of  it  as  the  very 
means  of  freedom,  by  which  we  realize  the  very 
purpose  of  God  and  the  fulfilment  of  our  life. 
It  is  interesting  to  see  how  all  that  is  true  in 
regard  to  the  matter  of  belief,  doctrine,  and  opin- 
ions which  we  are  to  accept.  How  strange  it 
very  often  seems  that  men  go  to  the  Church,  or  to 
one  another,  and  say :  "  Must  I  believe  this  doc- 
trine in  order  that  I  can  enter  into  the  Church?  " 
"  Must  I  believe  this  doctrine  in  order  that  I  may 
be  saved?  "  men  say,  with  a  strange  sort  of  notion 
about  what  salvation  is.  How  strange  it  seems, 
when  we  really  have  got  our  intelligence  about 
us  and  know  what  it  is  to  believe !  To  believe 


108  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

a  new  truth,  if  it  be  really  truth  and  we  really 
believe  it,  is  to  have  entered  into  a  new  region, 
in  which  our  life  shall  find  a  new  expansion  and 
a  new  youth.  Therefore,  not "  Must  we  believe  ?  " 
but  "May  I  believe?"  is  the  true  cry  of  the 
human  creature  who  is  seeking  for  the  richest 
fulfilment  of  his  life,  who  is  working  that  his 
whole  nature  may  find  its  complete  expansion 
and  so  its  completest  exercise.  We  talk  a  great 
deal  in  these  days  and  in  this  place  about  a 
liberal  faith.  What  is  a  liberal  faith,  my  friends  ? 
It  seems  to  me  that  by  every  true  meaning  of 
the  word,  by  every  true  thought  of  the  idea,  a 
liberal  faith  is  a  faith  that  believes  much,  and 
not  a  faith  that  believes  little.  The  more  a  man 
believes,  the  more  liberally  he  exercises  his 
capacity  of  faith,  the  more  he  sends  forth  his 
intelligence  into  the  mysteries  of  God,  the  more 
he  understands  those  things  which  God  chooses 
to  reveal  to  his  creatures,  the  more  liberally  he 
believes.  Let  yourselves  never  think  that  you 
grow  liberal  in  faith  by  believing  less ;  always 
be  sure  that  the  true  liberality  of  faith  can  only 
come  by  believing  more.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that 
as  soon  as  a  man  becomes  eager  for  belief,  for  the 
truth  of  God  and  for  the  mysteries  with  which 
God's  universe  is  filled,  he  becomes  all  the  more 
critical  and  careful.  He  will  not  any  longer,  if 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  109 

he  were  before,  be  simply  greedy  of  things  to 
believe,  so  that  if  any  superstition  conies  offer- 
ing itself  to  him  he  will  not  gather  it  in  in- 
discriminately and  believe  it  without  evidence, 
without  examination.  He  becomes  all  the  more 
critical  and  careful,  the  more  he  becomes  assured 
that  belief,  and  not  unbelief,  is  the  true  condition 
of  his  life.  The  truth  that  God  has  entered  into 
this  world  in  wondrous  ways  and  filled  its  life 
with  Jesus  Christ,  the  truth  that  man  has  a  soul 
and  not  simply  a  body,  that  he  has  a  spiritual 
need,  that  God  cares  for  him  and  he  is  to  care 
for  himself,  that  there  is  an  immortal  life,  and 
that  that  which  we  call  faith  is  but  the  opening 
of  a  gate,  the  pushing  back  of  a  veil,  —  shall  a 
man  believe  those  things  as  imprisonments  of  his 
nature,  and  shall  it  not  make  him  larger?  Shall 
it  not  be  the  indulgence  of  his  life  when  he  enters 
into  the  great  certainties  which  so  are  offered  to 
his  belief,  believing  them  in  his  own  way?  Let 
us  always  feel  that  to  accept  a  new  belief  is  not  to 
build  a  wall  beyond  which  we  cannot  pass,  but  is 
to  open  the  door  to  a  great  fresh,  free  region,  in 
which  our  souls  are  to  live.  And  just  so  it  is  when 
we  come  to  the  moral  things  of  life.  The  man  puts 
aside  some  sinfulness.  He  breaks  down  the  wall 
that  has  been  shutting  his  soul  out  of  its  highest 
life.  He  has  been  a  drunkard,  and  he  becomes  a 


110  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

sober  man.  He  has  been  a  cheat  and  becomes  a 
faithful  man.  He  has  been  a  liar  and  becomes 
a  truthful  man.  He  has  been  a  profligate,  and 
he  becomes  a  pure  man.  What  has  happened  to 
that  man?  Shall  he  simply  think  of  himself  as 
one  who  has  crushed  this  passion,  shut  down 
this  part  of  his  life?  Shall  he  simply  think  of 
himself  as  one  who  has  taken  a  course  of  self- 
denial?  Nay.  It  is  self-indulgence  that  a  man 
has  really  entered  upon.  It  is  an  indulgence  of 
the  deepest  part  of  his  own  nature,  not  of  his 
unreal  nature.  He  has  risen  and  shaken  himself 
like  a  lion,  so  that  the  dust  has  fallen  from  his 
mane,  and  all  the  great  range  of  that  life  which 
God  gave  him  to  live  lies  before  him.  This  is 
the  everlasting  inspiration.  This  is  the  illumi- 
nation. I  don't  wonder  that  men  refuse  to  give 
up  evil  if  it  simply  seems  to  them  to  be  giving 
up  the  evil  way,  and  no  vision  opens  before  them 
of  the  thing  that  they  may  be  and  do.  I  don't 
wonder  that,  if  the  negative,  restricting,  impris- 
oning conception  of  the  new  life  is  all  that  a  man 
gets  hold  of,  he  lingers  again  and  again  in  the  old 
life.  But  just  as  soon  as  the  great  world  opens 
before  him  then  it  is  like  a  prisoner  going  out 
of  the  prison  door,  is  there  no  lingering?  Does 
not  the  baser  part  of  him  cling  to  the  old 
prison,  to  the  ease  and  the  provision  for  him, 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  Ill 

to  the  absence  of  anxiety  and  of  energy?  I 
think  there  can  hardly  be  a  prisoner  who,  with 
any  leap  of  heart,  goes  out  of  the  prison  door, 
when  his  term  is  finished,  and  does  not  even  look 
into  that  black  horror  where  he  has  been  living, 
cast  some  lingering,  longing  look  behind.  He 
comes  to  the  exigencies,  to  the  demands  of  life, 
to  the  necessity  of  making  himself  once  more  a 
true  man  among  his  fellow-men.  But  does  he 
stop?  He  comes  forth,  and  if  there  be  the  soul 
of  a  man  in  him  still,  he  enters  into  the  new  life 
with  enthusiasm,  and  finds  the  new  power? 
springing  in  him  to  their  work.  And  if  it  be 
so  with  every  special  duty,  then  with  that  great 
thing  which  you  and  I  are  called  upon  to  do  — 
the  total  acceptance  by  our  nature  of  the  will  of 
God,  the  total  acceptance  by  our  nature  of  the 
mastery  of  Jesus  Christ.  Oh!  how  this  world 
has  perverted  words  and  meanings,  that  the 
mastery  of  Jesus  Christ  should  seem  to  be  the 
impiisonment  and  not  the  enfranchisement  of 
the  soul!  When  I  bring  a  flower  out  of  the 
darkness  and  set  it  in  the  sun,  and  let  the  sun- 
light come  streaming  down  upon  it,  and  the 
flower  knows  the  sunlight  for  which  it  was  made 
and  opens  its  fragrance  and  beauty ;  when  I  take 
a  dark  pebble  and  put  it  into  the  stream  and  let 
the  silver  water  go  coursing  down  over  it  and 


112  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

bringing  fortli  the  hidden  color  that  was  in  the 
bit  of  stone,  opening  the  nature  that  is  in  them, 
the  flower  and  stone  rejoice.  I  can  almost  hear 
them  sing  in  the  field  and  in  the  stream.  What 
then?  Shall  not  man  bring  his  nature  out  into 
the  fullest  illumination,  and  surprise  himself  by 
the  things  that  he  might  do?  Oh!  the  littleness 
of  the  lives  that  we  are  living!  Oh!  the  way  in 
which  we  fail  to  comprehend,  or  when  we  do 
comprehend,  deny  to  ourselves  the  bigness  of 
that  thing  which  it  is  to  be  a  man,  to  be  a  child 
of  God!  Sometimes  it  dawns  upon  us  that  we 
can  see  it  opening  into  the  vision  of  these  men 
and  women  in  the  New  Testament.  Sometimes 
there  opens  to  us  the  picture  of  this  thing  that 
we  might  be,  and  then  there  are  truly  the  trial 
moments  of  our  life.  Then  we  lift  up  ourselves 
and  claim  our  liberty  or,  dastardly  or  cowardly, 
slink  back  into  the  sluggish  imprisonment  in 
which  we  have  been  living.  How  does  all  this 
affect  that  which  we  are  continually  conscious 
of,  urging  upon  ourselves  and  upon  one  another? 
How  does  it  affect  the  whole  question  of  a  man's 
sins?  Oh!  these  sins,  the  things  we  know  so 
well!  As  we  sit  here  and  stand  here  one  entire 
hour,  as  we  talk  in  this  sort  of  way,  everybody 
knows  the  weaknesses  of  his  own  nature,  the  sins 
of  hia  own  soul.  Don't  you  know  it?  What 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  113 

shall  we  think  about  those  sins?  It  seems  to  me, 
my  friends,  that  all  this  great  picture  of  the 
liberty  into  which  Christ  sets  man,  in  the  first 
place  does  one  thing  which  we  are  longing  to  see 
done  in  the  world.  It  takes  away  the  glamour 
and  the  splendor  from  sin.  It  breaks  that  spell 
by  which  men  think  that  the  evil  thing  is  the 
glorious  thing.  If  the  evil  thing  be  that  which 
Christ  has  told  us  that  the  evil  thing  is  —  which 
I  have  no  time  to  tell  you  now  —  if  every  sin 
that  you  do  is  not  simply  a  stain  upon  your  soul, 
but.  is  keeping  you  out  from  some  great  and 
splendid  thing  which  you  might  do,  then  is 
there  any  sort  of  splendor  and  glory  about  sin? 
How  about  the  sins  that  you  did  when  you  were 
young  men?  How  can  you  look  back  upon  those 
sins  and  think  what  your  life  might  have  been 
if  it  had  been  pure  from  the  beginning,  think 
what  you  might  have  been  if  from  the  very 
beginning  you  had  caught  sight  of  what  it  was 
to  be  a  man?  And  then  your  boy  comes  along. 
What  are  the  men  in  this  town  doing  largely  in 
many  and  many  a  house,  but  letting  their  boys 
believe  that  the  sins  of  their  early  life  are  glori- 
ous things,  except  that  tf'ose  things  which  they 
did,  the  base  and  wretched  things  that  they  were 
doing  when  they  were  fifteen  and  twenty  and 
twenty-five  and  thirty  years 'old;' '-'are  the  true 


114  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

career  of  a  human  nature,  are  the  true  entrance 
into  human  life?  The  miserable  talk  about  sow- 
ing wild  oats,  about  getting  through  the  neces- 
sary conditions  of  life  before  a  man  comes  to 
solemnity!  Shame  upon  any  man  who,  having 
passed  through  the  sinful  conditions  and  habits 
and  dispositions  of  his  earlier  life,  has  not  car- 
ried out  of  them  an  absolute  shame  for  them, 
that  shall  let  him  say  to  his  boy,  by  word  and  by 
every  utterance  of  his  life  within  the  house 
where  he  and  the  boy  live  together,  "  Refrain, 
for  they  are  abominable  things !  "  To  get  rid  of 
the  glamour  of  sin,  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  it 
is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  dissipated  instead  of 
being  concentrated  to  duty,  to  get  rid  of  the  idea 
that  to  be  drunken  and  to  be  lustful  are  true  and 
noble  expressions  of  our  abounding  human  life, 
to  get  rid  of  any  idea  that  sin  is  aught  but 
imprisonment,  is  to  make  those  who  come  after 
us,  and  to  make  ourselves  in  what  of  life  is  left 
for  us,  gloriously  ambitious  for  the  freedom  of 
purity,  for  a  full  entrance  into  that  life  over 
which  sin  has  no  dominion.  And  yet,  at  the 
same  time,  don't  you  see  that  while  sin  thus 
becomes  contemptible  when  we  think  about  the 
great  illustration  of  the  will  of  God  and  Jesus 
Christ,  don't  you  see  how  also  it  puts  on  a  new 
horror?  That  which  I  thought  I  was  doing  in 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  115 

the  halls  of  my  imprisonment  I  have  really  been 
doing  within  the  possible  world  of  God  in  which 
I  might  have  been  free.  The  moment  I  see  what 
life  might  have  been  to  me,  then  any  sin  becomes 
dreadful  to  me.  Have  you  ever  thought  of  how 
the  world  has  stood  in  glory  and  honor  before 
the  sinless  humanity  of  Jesus  Christ?  If  any 
life  could  prove,  if  any  argument  could  show  on 
investigation  to-day  that  Jesus  did  one  sin  in  all 
his  life,  that  the  perfect  liberty  which  was  his 
perfect  purity  was  not  absolutely  perfect,  do  you 
realize  what  a  horror  would  seem  to  fall  down 
from  the  heavens,  what  a  constraint  and  burden 
would  be  laid  upon  the  lives  of  men,  how  the 
gates  of  men's  possibilities  would  seem  to  close 
in  upon  them?  It  is  because  there  has  been  that 
one  life  which,  because  absolutely  pure  from  sin, 
was  absolutely  free ;  it  is  because  man  may  look 
up  and  see  in  that  life  the  revelation  and  possi- 
bility of  his  own;  it  is  because  that  life,  echoing 
the  great  cry  throughout  the  world  that  man  every- 
where is  the  son  of  God,  offers  the  same  purity  — 
and  so  the  same  freedom — to  all  mankind; 
it  is  for  that  reason  that  a  man  rejoices  to  cling 
to,  to  believe  in,  however  impure  his  life  is,  the 
perfect  purity,  the  sinlessness  of  the  life  of  Jesus. 
When  you  sin,  my  friends,  it  is  a  man  that  sins, 
and  a  man  is  a  child  of  God;  and  for  a  child  of 


116  PERFhCT   FLEE DOM. 

God  to  sin  is  an  awful  thing,  not  simply  for  the 
stain  that  he  brings  into  the  divine  nature  that 
is  in  him,  but  for  the  life  from  which  it  shuts 
him  out,  for  the  liberty  which  he  abandons,  for 
the  enthrallment  which  it  lays  upon  the  soul. 
There  is  one  thing  that  people  say  very  care- 
lessly that  always  seems  to  me  to  be  a  dreadful 
thing  for  a  man  to  say.  They  say  it  when  they 
talk  about  their  lives  to  one  another,  and  think 
ibout  their  lives  to  themselves,  and  by  and  by 
very  often  say  it  upon  their  death-bed  with  the 
last  gasp,  as  though  their  entrance  into  the  eter- 
nal world  had  brought  them  no  deeper  enlighten- 
ment. One  wonders  what  is  the  revelation  that 
comes  to  them  when  they  stand  upon  the  borders 
of  the  other  side  and  are  in  the  full  life  and 
eternity  of  God.  The  thing  men  say  is,  "  I  have 
done  the  very  best  I  can."  It  is  an  awful  thing 
for  a  man  to  say.  The  man  never  lived,  save  he 
who  perfected  our  humanity,  who  ever  did  the 
?ery  best  he  could.  You  dishonor  your  life,  you 
not  simply  shut  your  eyes  to  certain  facts,  you 
not  simply  say  an  infinitely  absurd  and  foolish 
thing,  but  you  dishonor  your  human  life  if  you 
say  that  you  have  done  in  any  day  of  your  life 
or  in  all  the  days  of  your  life  put  together,  the 
very  best  that  you  could,  or  been  the  very  best 
man  that  you  could  be.  You !  what  are  you  ? 


TRUE  LIBERTY.  117 

Again  I  say,  The  child  of  God,  and  this  which  you 
have  been,  what  is  it?  Look  over  it,  see  how 
selfish  it  has  been,  see  how  material  it  has  been, 
how  it  has  lived  in  the  depths  when  it  might 
have  lived  on  the  heights,  see  how  it  has  lived  in 
the  little  narrow  range  of  selfishness  when  it 
might  have  been  as  broad  as  all  humanity,  nay, 
when  it  might  have  been  as  the  God  of  humanity. 
Don't  dare  to  say  that  in  any  day  of  your  life,  or 
in  all  your  life  together,  you  have  done  the  best 
that  you  could.  The  Pharisee  said  it  when  he 
went  up  into  the  temple,  and  all  the  world  has 
looked  on  with  mingled  pity  and  scorn  at  the 
blindness  of  the  man  who  stood  there  and  paraded 
his  faithfulness ;  while  all  the  world  has  bent 
with  a  pity  that  was  near  to  love,  a  pity  that  was 
full  of  sympathy  because  man  recognized  his  con- 
dition and  experience,  for  the  poor  creature  grov- 
elling upon  the  pavement,  unwilling  and  unable 
even  to  look  upon  the  altar,  but  who,  standing 
afar  off,  said,  "  God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner ! " 
Whatever  else  you  say,  don't  say,  "I  have  been 
the  very  best  I  could."  That  means  that  you 
have  not  merely  lived  in  the  rooms  of  your 
imprisonment,  but  that  you  have  been  satisfied 
to  count  them  the  only  possible  rooms  of  your 
life,  and  that  the  great  halls  of  your  liberty  have 
nerer  opened  themselves  before  you.  Shall  not 


118  PERFECT  FREEDOM. 

they  open  themselves  somehow  to  us  to-day,  my 
friends?  Shall  we  not  turn  away  from  this  hour 
and  go  back  into  our  business,  into  our  offices, 
into  the  shops,  into  the  crowded  streets,  bearing 
new  thoughts  of  the  lives  that  we  might  live, 
feeling  the  fetters  on  our  hands  and  feet,  feeling 
many  things  as  fetters  which  we  have  thought 
of  as  the  ornament  and  glory  of  our  life,  deter- 
mined to  be  unsatisfied  forever  until  these  fetters 
skall  be  stricken  off  and  we  have  entered  into 
the  full  liberty  which  comes  to  those  alone  who 
are  dedicated  to  the  service  of  God,  to  the  com- 
pletion of  their  own  nature,  to  the  acceptance  of 
the  grace  of  Christ,  and  to  the  attainment  of  the 
eternal  glory  of  the  spiritual  life,  first  here  and 
then  hereafter,  never  hereafter,  it  may  be,  except 
here  and  now,  certainly  here  and  now,  as  the 
immediate,  pressing  privilege  and  duty  of  our 
lives?  So  let  us  stand  up  on  our  feet  and  know 
ourselves  in  all  the  richness  and  in  all  the  awful- 
ness  of  our  human  life.  Let  us  know  ourselves 
children  of  God,  and  claim  the  liberty  which  God 
has  given  to  every  one  of  his  children  who  will 
take  it.  God  bless  you  and  give  some  of  you, 
help  some  of  us,  to  claim,  as  we  have  never 
claimed  before,  that  freedom  with  which  the  Son 
makes  free! 


